Tucked away in storage rooms at the Museum of Church History and Art is a stuffed penguin, about 2 feet tall, somewhat faded and worn, but with a whimsical look in its eye.
Whenever new people come to work at the museum, "we always let them discover the penguin," says Carrie Snow, supervisor for collections care for art and artifacts at the museum. At first, the bird seems out of place; people wonder what it is doing there.
But it is one of the oldest artifacts in the museum, probably brought back by a missionary to New Zealand, and it represents the interest the early pioneers had in actively seeking knowledge in all fields, says Snow. "I've heard that they were going to send it to another museum, but the staff wouldn't let it go."
As with the other 150,000 or so artifacts in the museum's collection, the penguin's true worth is not in the object itself but in the story behind it. And that story is one of very early interest in the past.
The history of history in Utah — at least as far as the studying, collecting and trying to preserve it goes — actually began while the saints were in Kirtland, Ohio. Lucy Mack Smith was given custody of some Egyptian mummies, and she charged a small fee to visitors who wanted to see them.
After they moved to Nauvoo, she continued that practice. Technically, says Glen M. Leonard, former director of the MCHA, "that was the first church museum."
Its scope was broadened somewhat when, as reported on May 24, 1843, Addison Pratt "presented the tooth of a whale, coral, bones of an Albatross' wing and skin of a foot, jaw-bone of a porpoise and tooth of a South sea seal as the beginning for a museum in Nauvoo."
Nauvoo resident Philo Dibble was also interested in "the broad concept of a museum as an educational institution for learning, books and art," says Leonard. Dibble collected books and commissioned the painting of a couple of large murals relating to church history that were shown publicly in the Masonic Hall.
It was Dibble who acquired the death masks of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. While the saints were still at Winter Quarters, he wanted to collect more artifacts and got Brigham Young to issue a proclamation. "If the saints will be diligent," Young said, and bring "all kinds of mathematical and philosophical/scientific/instruments, together with all rare specimens of natural curiosities and works of art . . . we will soon have the best, the most useful and attractive museum on earth."
After the pioneers settled in the Salt Lake Valley, plans for a museum got sidetracked somewhat. "They were so busy eking out a living that Dibble could not get the support he wanted to open a museum," says Leonard.
That task fell to John W. Young, a son of Brigham Young, who in December of 1869 opened the Salt Lake City Museum and Menagerie to show tourists on the transcontinental railroad "what we have and what we are doing" in the Utah Territory.
The museum was housed in a two-room adobe building just west of the Lion House and consisted of a small room of "interesting relics and curios," as well as cages for a variety of animals.
In 1871, that building was needed for the Deseret Telegraph Co., and the museum moved to a two-story building outside the south gate of Temple Square, where it stayed for the next 20 years. With this move, the menageries were eliminated. The Deseret Museum, as it came to be known, concentrated on exhibits of Utah home manufactures, minerals, fossils and prehistory, plus items of LDS Church history and Brigham Young's personal collection of Oriental and Polynesian memorabilia, says Leonard.
"The Deseret Museum became the granddaddy of all other Utah museums," he adds.
Its continued development coincided with a resurgence of interest in history on the national level. "In 1876, the nation celebrated its centennial, and people began to think in patriotic terms about the past. Many historical organizations came out of that interest."
In Utah, an added spark of interest came from the 1897 Jubilee — a celebration of 50 years since the arrival of the pioneers. "That was a huge celebration." And out of it, Leonard says, came the formation of the Utah Historical Society and then such groups as the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, patterned after the Daughters of the American Revolution; the Genealogical Society of Utah; and the Sons of Utah Pioneers.
"There was a desire to honor the founders of the nation and the state, and individuals and their stories became important. Pioneer diaries, artifacts belonging to them, kitchen items, watches, shoes and other personal belongings were collected."
For the Jubilee, a relic hall was set up with items borrowed from people throughout the territory. "Afterward, most people came and took home their relics. But some didn't. Those were eventually handed over to the DUP; some also went to Temple Square."
Meanwhile, the Deseret Museum was undergoing changes. In 1878, ownership was transferred to the LDS Church, but in 1885, as the church was being stripped of many of its holdings because of polygamy, the museum was taken over by the Salt Lake Literary and Scientific Association. In 1899, ownership reverted to the church.
In 1891, James E. Talmage became director and curator of the museum. In 1893, he moved the museum to the top floor of a building on Second North that was used by the LDS College, of which he was also president.
In 1903, that building was sold, and the museum collection went into storage in the basement of the Salt Lake Temple, where it remained for seven years. In 1911, the Deseret Museum moved into the Vermont Building on South Temple at Richard Street — its fifth and final home.
At this time, in the "Deseret Museum Bulletin," Talmage summed up the purpose and goals of the museum. "By derivation, the word 'museum' means a home or temple of the Muses, hence a place for study and contemplation. The educational value of museums is now very generally recognized. . .
"Needless to say the Deseret Museum makes no pretension of equality with the famous museums of world-wide repute and influence, nor with any of the large institutions supported by public funds or by great endowments. Nevertheless it professes to be an institution of genuine worth, active, virile and ever-growing. It was established when the people were in poverty; it has grown with the commonwealth; and today it is an institution of which city and state may well be proud."
Despite such optimism, however, the Deseret Museum would not last long. In 1919, Talmage was called as a general authority of the church and gave up his museum directorship, and the church decided to refocus the museum's purpose.
Portions of the collection were transferred to other institutions, explains Leonard. The gems and minerals, for example, went to the University of Utah, where they became the core of the Utah Museum of Natural History. Many of the animal specimens went to Brigham Young University, where they became part of what is now the Monte Bean Museum. Some of the historical artifacts went to the DUP.
"The church retained items of historical and cultural interest to the church," says Leonard. This reduced collection was displayed on Temple Square in a wing added to the Bureau of Information building.
In the late 1960s and early '70s, as Americans looked to the bicentennial, another wave of interest in history surfaced. "There was a big national interest in historic preservation. Every state had a preservation officer, and lists of buildings and historic registers were created. The Utah Heritage Foundation came out of that," he says, as did a lot of community history museums and bicentennial history projects.
In the early '70s, building on the success of the Mormon Pavilion at the New York World's Fair and the opening in 1966 of the new visitors center on Temple Square, the decision was made to replace the Bureau of Information with a second visitors center. In 1973, the collection went into storage once more.
A question frequently asked is: What happened to the mummies that had been on display in the Bureau of Information? Everyone who visited that museum remembers them, says Snow. They went to the Museum of Peoples and Cultures at BYU.
In 1983, the church completed its new Museum of Church History and Art, and much of its historical collection — including some of the early artifacts of the Deseret Museum — was once again put on display.
It is fun to go out in the galleries, "and see people connect with them," says Snow. Some show the development of progress, she says: from telephone back to telegraph, to early printing processes. "Some are things people have heard about all their lives. Every year what we collect and how we collect changes, but the stories behind the artifacts help put them in context."
We owe a big debt to those early collectors and purveyors of history, says Leonard. "It goes back to the question of what is history for? History helps us understand ourselves. It helps us understand how to deal with the natural environment, the human environment, commerce and transportation, the social environment."
The today we live in, he says, is the product of the past. "To appreciate where we are, we have to look back."
E-mail: carma@desnews.com